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To thunderous applause from around 200 citizens, Russell County’s board of supervisors (BOS) unanimously terminated negotiations with a private company that wanted to build a landfill at an abandoned coal preparation plant Monday night. The BOS met in closed session for roughly 30 minutes before returning to a packed room at the Russell County Government Center. Supervisors wasted little time after returning to seats draped with t-shirts declaring "Overcome Evil With Good" and the word Landfill crossed out. They passed a resolution that said after exchanging multiple drafts of a "host agreement," which would have compensated the county for hosting the landfill and provided other protections, "Russell County has determined that negotiation of the proposed host agreement will not succeed." Since learning about the proposal last fall, Tammy Gardner, a Lebanon resident, said she had filed freedom of information act requests and researched the environmental risks landfills can pose. [Gardner], who first came to a BOS meeting in October 2023 after hearing about the landfill discussions, said while the BOS "operated with this proposal under a cloak of secrecy," that won't happen as easily again.

Responding to a Times-Mirror Freedom of Information Act request, Loudoun County Public Schools has identified members of the "Blue Ribbon Panel on School Safety," whose recommendations have drawn criticism from some activists, liberal groups, parents and a School Board member. Superintendent Aaron Spence formed the panel in December after taking over at LCPS in September. The panel was part of his six-month entry plan, and he plans to discuss its findings at the School Board's June 11 retreat. In May, LCPS spokesman Dan Adams refused to release panelists' names — citing "security reasons" — and shared only the agencies and organizations they represented. But the school division released the names on June 7 in response to a June 4 FOIA request.

A Charlotte County grand jury issued criminal indictments Wednesday against longtime Charlotte County supervisor Gary Walker on eight new felony charges of perjury. The indictments are tied to concerns about the accuracy of information Walker provided on his annual Statement of Economic Interests (SEI) forms filed between Jan. 1, 2016, and Jan. 11, 2023. Walker was previously indicted in January on three felony charges of perjury and two misdemeanor charges of failure to submit a yearly SEI form. In January, Walker turned himself in to Virginia State Police in response to the initial indictments, after which he was released on a recognizance bond. A capias (an arrest warrant) was issued for Walker on Wednesday after the grand jury handed down the eight new felony counts. Walker, 73, resides in Charlotte Courthouse. Information posted on the Virginia Court Case Management online system indicates that he has not turned himself in on the latest charges. Kay Pierantoni, who served on the Charlotte County Board of Supervisors from the Wylliesburg-Red Oak district in 2020, first accused Walker of accepting gifts for his district ahead of a vote to issue a conditional use permit to Raleigh, N.C.-based solar developer Holocene Clean Energy for the development of the 5-megawatt Red House Solar project near Phenix. Walker responded by telling Pierantoni at the time that her remarks bordered on “slander.”

The mother of the teen who was killed in a shooting outside a Richmond Public Schools graduation last year has started the process of taking legal action against the school district, CBS 6 has confirmed. CBS 6 has learned that lawyers for Tameeka Jackson-Smith, Shawn Jackson's mother and Renzo Smith's widow, sent a demand letter to the Richmond School Board last week. At the center of the allegation, is that RPS should not have allowed Jackson at graduation due to the known safety concerns surrounding his participation. A third-party investigation report, only released publicly after CBS 6 and the Richmond Times-Dispatch sued the school board for access to it, revealed school personnel knew of threats of violence against Jackson, which his mother warned them about.

The Delaware Attorney General (AG) rules the Association of Coastal Towns (ACT) violated FOIA requirements and must act as a public body. ACT is composed of seven southern Delaware coastal communities, including Lewes, Henlopen Acres, Rehoboth, Dewey Beach, Bethany Beach, South Bethany and Fenwick Island. According to the body's mission statement, " ACT strives to collectively preserve and protect the unique character of coastal Delaware by focusing on the preservation of coastal ecosystems and other critical issues such as beach replenishment, maintenance of navigable waterways, tidal flooding, and sea level rise." The Department of Justice made the decision after a petition was filed alleging the group was not holding open meetings, denying residents the opportunity to be involved in matters related to the US Wind offshore wind project.

A few years ago, the Internal Revenue Service announced that it had begun using the identity credential service ID.me for taxpayers to access various online tools. At some point between then and now, the IRS quietly began directing people filing public records requests through its online portal to register for the private biometric verification system. Though Freedom of Information Act requests to the tax agency can still be filed through FOIA.gov, the mail, by fax, or even in person, the IRS’s decision to point online filers to ID.me — whose facial verification technology has, in the past, drawn scrutiny from Congress — has raised some advocates’ eyebrows Alex Howard, who directs the Digital Democracy Project at the Demand Progress Educational Fund and also serves on the FOIA Advisory Board hosted out of the National Archives, said in an email to FedScoop that language on the IRS website seems to encourage ID.me use for faster service. It also doesn’t make significant references to FOIA.gov, a separate governmentwide portal that agencies are supposed to work with by law, he said.